While at NAD, Westloch
(1961-1964), I was an MN-2 assigned as an ambulance driver in my
duty section. One Saturday afternoon, a young HMSN corpsman and
I were called to the barracks to check on a Mineman who lay
unconscious and bloody on the concrete deck. The poor guy, who
had fallen out of the top bunk, was laying on his side with a
pool of coagulated blood around his head. Apparently, he had
laid there unnoticed for a while. We raised the guy's head, &
blood oozed from his ear. The young corpsman panicked & quickly
decided we should transport him fast to Barber's Point. So with
lights flashing & siren wailing I drove the Cadillac at high
speed through the nearby cane fields & through the side-gate at
Barber's Point. We almost got T-boned by a station wagon at the
front gate to the base. But, after only a few minutes examining
the patient, a steaming-mad doctor came out & chewed us out. It
seems the unconscious sailor was merely passed-out drunk & his
only injuries were busted lips from his fall.

The duty ambulance driver
slept in a small sick-bay at the Admin Building. One night, I
was disturbed by an odd sound, it wasn't very loud, but it was a
rapid thumping noise that seemed to be getting closer. Curious,
I pushed aside the mosquito net and saw a cup-sized cane spider,
coming my way on the thin plywood wall near my bunk. The thin
plywood & the air-void underneath created a sounding-board that
amplified the sound. I had heard some unbelievable stories about
the size of Hawaii's cane spiders, but never would have guessed
that you could actually hear them walking.

One of our ambulance drivers
became a local hero one day while responding to a car wreck near
the base. When he arrived, two dazed local men were watching
their car burn with an badly injured woman still inside. Bill
Sellers pulled the woman from the burning car & saved her life.

At the absolute height of
the Cuban missile crisis, several of us in the duty section were
standing outside the Admin building discussing the tense
military situation in Cuba and its possible dire consequences
when someone suddenly pointed up in the sky and said, "What the
hell is that?"

Several miles, high above
Oahu, there was a mysterious & alarming, rapidly spreading
orange-colored cloud. Alarmed, the CDO told someone to go call
Lualualei and see what the hell was happening. At that point, as
a group we sort of eased toward the safety of the concrete
building. Boy, did we feel foolish when we found out that a
long-planned, but ill-timed rocket fired by the
weather-people had deployed a sodium cloud to see how the winds
aloft would spread the cloud over the island.

It was a long-standing Navy
custom, when a sailor's wife was arriving from the mainland, to
take him to the airport by a slow round-about route, that
included stops for beer, pee-breaks & most important of all "a
late arrival." Since I didn't have a car when my wife was to
arrive, my "best buddy" Fred Bartram & others generously offered
to take me to the airport. Now, I hadn't seen my wife for over
27-months so I was a tad anxious as the above described scenario
unfolded. When I finally arrived, 30 minutes late & a little
tipsy, I couldn't find my wife. Finally, I found her over at the
"Flights to the Mainland" counter. She was very upset, & was
already checking on a return flight. I learned later that her
4-prop plane had lost an engine past the halfway point & the
Coast Guard had sent a rescue plane out to escort them the rest
of the way to Oahu. No wonder she was so upset by her tardy
welcoming committee.